The bed was low and open on all sides, and the alcove hung with curtains of pink silk, setting off Rachel’s nakedness in all its splendour; she might have been some fabled daughter of the sea, ensconced within a glimmering shell.
“If I were a painter …” Antoine murmured.
“That settles it; you must be tired.” A smile came and went on Rachel’s face. “When you start being artistic, it always means you’re tired.”
She flung her head back, and her face, framed in the fiery halo of her hair, was lost in shadows. A pearly lustre emanated from her body. Her right leg lay in an easy, flowing curve upon the mattress, sinking a-little into it; the other, flexed and drawn up in the opposite direction, displayed the graceful outline of her thigh, lifting an ivory knee towards the sunlight.
“I’m hungry,” she whimpered. But, when he went to the bed to fetch her empty plate, she flung her strong arms round his neck and drew his face towards her.
“Oh, that beard of yours!” she exclaimed, but did not let him go. “When shall we abate the nuisance?”
He stood up, cast an anxious look at the glass, and brought her another slice of cake.
“Yes, it’s just that I like so much in you,” he declared, watching her teeth close on an ample mouthful.
“My appetite?”
“No, your fitness. Your body with its splendid circulation. You’re bracing, like a tonic… . I’m pretty well built, too,” he added, and, turning to the mirror, viewed his reflected self. Squaring his shoulders, he straightened up his chest and puffed it out, but failed to realize how undersized his limbs appeared in proportion to his head; he always persuaded himself that his physique as a whole had the same look of vigour as the facial expression he had cultivated. During the past two weeks his sense of power and plenitude had been stimulated beyond all measure by the emotions love engendered. “Do you know,” he concluded, “you and I are built to see a century through?”
“Together?” she whispered, with half-shut, tender eyes. And then a passing shadow dimmed her happiness: the dread that one day his appeal for her, the source of so much present joy, might lose its power.
Opening her eyes, she lightly stroked her legs, running her palms over the lissom skin.
“Personally,” she declared, “if no one murders me, I’m certain to die old. Father was seventy-two when I lost him and he was hale as a man of fifty. He died quite by accident, really—the after-effects of a sunstroke. As a matter of fact it runs in our family, death by misadventure, I mean. My brother was drowned. I shan’t die in my bed, either; a revolver-shot will be the end of me, I feel it in my bones.”
“How about your mother?”
“Mother? She’s very much alive. Every time I see her she looks younger. No wonder, of course, considering the life she leads.” Her voice had a curious inflexion as she added: “She’s shut up—at Saint Anne’s.”
“The asylum?”
“Hadn’t I told you?” Her smile seemed almost apologetic and she made haste to satisfy his curiosity. “She’s been there for seventeen years. I can hardly remember what she was like-—before. When one’s only nine, you know … Anyhow she’s cheerful,, doesn’t seem to worry in the least, always singing. Yes, as a family, we’re a tough lot! Look, the water’s boiling!”
He hurried to the gas-ring and, while the tea was brewing, surveyed himself in the dressing-table glass, covering his beard with his hand to see how he would look clean-shaven. No. It suited him, that dark mass at the bottom of his face; it emphasized so well the pale rectangle of his forehead, the curve of his eyebrows, and his eyes. Moreover, some instinct made him chary of unmasking his mouth-almost as if it were a secret better kept concealed.
Rachel sat up to drink her tea, then lit a cigarette, and stretched herself again on the bed.
“Come near me. What are you up to, mooning about over there?”
Gaily he slipped beside her and bent above her face. In the warm alcove the perfume of her loosened hair enveloped him, honey-sweet yet piquant, clinging and almost cloying; sometimes he ached for it and sometimes turned away, for, if he inhaled it too long, it left his throat and lungs filmed with a bitter-sweet aroma.
“What are you after now?” she asked.
“I’m looking at you.”
“Toine darling!”
When their lips parted he bent over her again, gazing down at her with insatiable eyes.
“What on earth are you staring at like that?”
“I’m trying to make out your pupils.”
“Are they so hard to find?”
“Yes; it’s because of your eyelashes. They form a sort of golden haze in front of your eyes. That’s what makes you look so …”
“So what?”
“So sphinx-like.”
She gave a little shrug.
“My pupils are blue, if you want to know.”
“So you say.”
“Silvery blue.”
“Not a bit of it!” He set his lips to Rachel’s, then teasingly withdrew them. “Sometimes they look grey, and sometimes mauve. A muzzy sort of colour … blurred.”
“Thanks very much!” Laughing, she rolled her eyes from side to side.
He gazed at her musingly. “Only a fortnight,” he said to himself, “but it seems like months. Yet I couldn’t have described the colour of her eyes. And her life—what do I know of it? Twenty-six years she’s lived without me, in a world so different from mine. Years crowded with a host of things, adventurous years. Mysteries, too, that I’m beginning to discover, bit by bit.” He would not admit the pleasure each discovery afforded him; still less give her an inkling of his pleasure. He never asked her anything, but she was always ready to talk about herself. He listened, ruminated, set facts and dates together, trying to understand, but above all amazed, taken aback at every turn. He was at pains to hide his wonder, but it was not chicanery that prompted him to do so. For years now his pose had been that of the man who understands everything; the only people he had learned to question were his patients. Surprise and curiosity were feelings that his pride had taught him to conceal, as best he might, under a mask of quiet interest and knowingness.
“One would think you’d never seen me before, the way you’re staring at me today,” she said. “That’s enough, drop it now for goodness’ sake!”
Under his scrutiny she was growing restive and, to escape it, shut her eyes. He began prising her lids apart with his fingers.
“Look here! That’s quite enough of it! I won’t have your eyes prying into mine like that.” She crooked her arm over her eyes.
“So you want to keep me in the dark, little sphinx?” He sprinkled kisses on the shining, shapely arm, from shoulder to wrist.
Secretive, is she? he asked himself. No, a trifle reserved, but not secretive. Quite the contrary; she likes chattering about herself. In fact she gets more talkative every day. And that’s because she loves me, he thought delightedly. Because she loves me… .
Putting her arm round his neck, she drew his face beside hers once more. When she spoke again, there was a graver note in her voice.
“That’s a fact, you know; one has no idea how one can give oneself away in a mere look.” She paused. He heard, deep down in her throat, the silent little laugh which so often preceded her evocations of the past. “That reminds me. … It was by his look, just the look on his face, that I hit upon the secret of a man with whom I’d been living for months. At a table, in a Bordeaux restaurant. We were facing each other, talking. Our eyes were going to and fro, from the plates to each other’s face, or glancing round the room. Suddenly— I’ll never forget it—for the fraction of a second I caught his eyes fixed on a point behind me, with an expression … I was so startled that I couldn’t help turning in my chair to see.”
“Well?”
“Well, that just shows, “she continued in a changed voice, “that one should mind the look in one’s eyes.”
“And what did you find out?” The question was on the tip of Antoine’s
tongue, but he dared not utter it. He had a morbid dread of making himself ridiculous by putting futile questions. Once or twice already he had ventured to ask for explanations at such moments and Rachel had looked at him with surprise, followed by amusement, laughing with an air of gentle mockery that deeply galled him.
So he held his tongue and it was she who broke the silence.
“All those old memories give me the blues. Kiss me. Again. Better than that.” But evidently the subject had not left her thoughts, for she added: “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t have said ‘his secret,’ but ‘one of his secrets.’ You could never get to the bottom of that man’s mind.”
Then, to break away from the past and, perhaps, to elude Antoine’s unspoken query, she rolled right over on the bed, with a slow, lithe, snake-like wriggle of all her body.
“How supple you are!” He stroked her body appreciatively, like a fancier stroking a thoroughbred.
“Yes? Did you know I’d had ten years’ training at the Opera School of Dancing?”
“What? At Paris?”
“Yes, my boy! What’s more, when I left I was a leading ballerina!”
“Was that long ago?”
“Six years.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“My legs.” Her face darkened for a moment. “After that, I almost joined a circus—as a trick-rider,” she continued quickly. “Are you surprised?”
“Not a bit,” he replied coolly. “What circus was it?”
“Oh, not a French one. A big international show that Hirsch was touring all over the world at the time. Hirsch, you know—that’s the fellow I told you about, who’s settled in the Sudan. He wanted to exploit my talent, but I wasn’t taking any!” While she spoke, she amused herself crooking and straightening out each leg in turn with the effortless agility of a trained gymnast. “What gave him the idea was that he’d persuaded me to try my hand at trick-riding some time before that, at Neuilly. I loved it. We had a fine stable then, and we made the most of it, you may be sure!”
“Were you living at Neuilly?”
“No; but he was. He owned the Neuilly riding-school in those days; he was always keen on horses. So was I. Are you?”
“I ride a bit,” he replied, straightening his back. “But I haven’t had many opportunities for getting on a horse—or the time for it.”
“Well, I had opportunities all right. And to spare. Why, we were once on horseback for twenty-two days on end!”
“Where was that?”
“At the back of beyond. In Morocco.”
“So you’ve been to Morocco?”
“Twice. Hirsch was selling obsolete Gras rifles to the tribes in the south, and an exciting job it was! Once there was a regular pitched battle round our camp. We were under fire for twenty-four hours; no, all night and the following morning. They don’t often make night-attacks. It was a terrifying business; we couldn’t see a thing. They killed seventeen of our bearers and wounded over thirty of them. I threw myself between the crates of rifles at each volley. But they got me all right!”
“What? You were wounded?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “Only a scratch it was.” She pointed to a silky scar on the line of her waist, just under the ribs.
“Why did you tell me you’d had a carriage-accident?” Antoine inquired unsmilingly.
“Oh,” she exclaimed with a little shrug, “that was our first day together! You’d have thought I was trying to show off.”
They were silent. So she’s capable of lying to me, Antoine thought.
Rachel’s eyes grew darkly pensive, then suddenly brightened again —but with a glint of hatred that quickly came and went.
“He’d got it into his head that I’d follow him anywhere and always. Well, he was wrong.”
Antoine felt an uneasy satisfaction every time she cast such rancorous glances at her former life. “Stay with me—always!” he felt inclined to say. Pressing his cheek against the little scar, he waited. His ear, true to its professional training, followed the languid vascular flux and reflux murmuring deep down in her chest, and heard, remote yet clear, the full-toned throbbing of her heart. His nostrils quivered. On the warm bed all Rachel’s body breathed the perfume of her hair, but subtler, more subdued; a faint yet maddening odour with a tang of spices in it, a humid fragrance redolent of a curious range of scents—hazel-leaves, fresh butter, pitchpine, and vanilla candy; less of a perfume, truth to tell, than a fine vapour, almost a flavour, leaving an aftertaste of spices on the lips.
“Let’s drop the subject,” she said. “Give me a cigarette. No, the ones on the little table. They’re made by a girl I know; she puts a dash of green tea in with the Virginia leaf. They smell of burning leaves, camp-fires, and—yes, that’s it—shooting-parties in September; the smell of gunpowder, you know, when you shoot the coverts and the smoke hangs in the mist.”
He stretched himself out beside her under the smoke-rings, and his hands caressed the almost phosphorescent whiteness, hardly pink at all, of Rachel’s belly, ample as a vase turned on the potter’s wheel. She had acquired, probably in the course of her travels, the habit of eastern unguents and, in its maturity, her skin still kept the fresh and flawless smoothness of a young child’s body.
“Umbilicus sicut crater eburneus,” he murmured, recalling as best he could the sonorous Latin of the Vulgate which had so thrilled him in his sixteenth year. “Venter tuus sicut—like a what?—sicut cupa.”
“What on earth does it mean?” She sat up on the bed. “Wait a bit! I’ll try and guess. Culpa; I know that word. Mea culpa, that’s it; a fault, a sin. ‘Thy belly is a sin,’ eh?”
He burst out laughing. Since she had come into his life, he no longer kept a hold on his high spirits.
“No, cupa. ‘Thy belly is like a goblet,’ ” he amended, leaning his head on Rachel’s hip, and proceeded with his slightly garbled versions of the Song of Solomon. “Quam pulchrae sunt mammae tuce, soror mea! ‘How beautiful are thy two breasts, my sister!’ Sicut duo (what’s the Latin for them?) gemelli qui pascuntur in liliis. ‘Like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’ ”
Delicately she held them up, first one and then the other, with a tender little smile for each, as if they were two friendly little animals.
“They’re awfully rare, you know, pink tips like that—really pink, like the buds on apple-trees,” she declared with almost judicial gravity. “As a doctor, you must have noticed that.”
“Yes, I believe you’re right. A skin without pigmental granulation. White on white, with pink shadows.” Shutting his eyes, he crushed himself against her. “Soft, soft shoulders …” he murmured sleepily. “I can’t bear flappers with their skimpy little shoulders.”
“Sure?”
“I love your delicious plumpness, every curve’s so smooth and firm; its texture’s like … like soap! Don’t move; I’m so comfortable.”
Suddenly a galling memory crossed his mind. “Like soap!” … A few days after Dedette’s accident he had travelled with Daniel from Maisons to Paris. They were alone in the compartment. Antoine’s mind was full of Rachel and the thought that now at last he could regale this expert amorist with an adventure of his own had proved too tempting; he could not contain himself, but launched into an account that lasted out the journey, of his dramatic night, the operation in extremis, the anxious vigil at the child’s bedside, and his sudden passion for the handsome red-haired girl dozing beside him on the couch. Then he had used those very words, “delicious plumpness,” “texture like soap.” But he had not dared to tell Daniel of what followed; describing how, as he went down the stairs, he noticed Rachel’s open door, he had added (less from motives of discretion than an absurd anxiety to prove his strength of will): “Did she expect me? Should I take the opportunity? Anyhow, I sized things up, pretended not to see, and passed the door. What would you have done in my place?” Then Daniel, who so far had heard him out in silence, looked him up and down, and rapped out: “W
hy, I’d have acted just as you did—you humbug!”
Daniel’s exclamation echoed in his ears, sceptical, ironic, almost cutting, but with’just the touch of geniality it needed not to be effective. Whenever he recalled it, it stung him to the quick. A humbug! Well, of course he was apt to lie upon occasion; or, more accurately, to catch himself out lying… .
Meanwhile, that “delicious plumpness” had made Rachel think too.
“I’ll grow into a fat old dame, quite likely,” she said. “Jews, you know. . , . Still, my mother wasn’t fat and I’m only half Yiddish. But you should have seen me sixteen years ago when I joined the beginners’ class. A regular little pink mouse I looked!”
She slipped off the bed before he had a chance of stopping her.
“What’s up?”
“I’ve got an idea… .”
“Anyhow you might give a fellow some warning.”
“Least said, soonest mended.” Laughing, she eluded his outstretched arm.
“Lulu dear … come back and sleep a bit,” he murmured lazily.
“No more bye-bye today! Closing time!” She slipped into her wrap.
She ran to her desk, unlocked it, and pulled out a drawer full of photographs. Then she came back and sat on the edge of the bed, resting the drawer on her knees.
“I love looking over old photos. Some nights I take the whole collection to bed with me and spend hour after hour turning them over, thinking. Don’t move! Have a look at them too, if it won’t bore you.”
Antoine, who had been lying curled up on the bed behind her, sat up at once; his interest was aroused and, resting his arms on the mattress, he settled into a comfortable position. As Rachel pored over her photographs he saw her in profile; her face had grown earnest and her drooping lashes showed like a faint filigree in pale gamboge along her slotted eyes. She had hastily put up her hair; against the light it shone like a chain-helmet woven of finespun silk, and almost orange-red; at every movement sparks seemed to flicker round her neck and at the corners of her temples.
“Here’s the one I was hunting for. See that little ballet-girl? It’s me! I got a rare telling-off that day, as a matter of fact, for spoiling the flounces of my ballet-skirt, crushing them against the wall like that. Aren’t I weird with my elbows like pinpoints, my hair all over my shoulders, and that flat, high-cut bodice? I don’t look over-cheerful, do I? Look here, that’s me in my third year; my calves were filling out a bit. Here’s the dancing-class, the bunch of us lined up along the practice-bar. Can you spot me amongst them? Yes, that’s me. That’s Louise over there—the name doesn’t mean anything to you, eh? Well, you’re looking at the famous Phytie Bella; we went through the school together and in those days she was just plain Louise to us. Louis, for short. We ran neck and neck for the first place. Yes, I might have been their star dancer today, only for my phlebitis… . Like to have a look at Hirsch? Ah, now you’re interested, I can see. Here he is. What do you think of him? I’m sure you didn’t guess he was so old. But, for all that he’s fifty, there’s lots of kick in the old dog yet, you may take my word for it. Loathsome creature! Look at that neck, that bull’s neck of his wedged between his shoulders; when he turns his head all the rest goes round with it. At first sight you might take him for almost anything—a horse-trader, or a trainer, perhaps—don’t you think so? His daughter was always saying to him: ‘Your Royal Highness reminds me of a slave-dealer!’ That used to start him laughing every time, with that fat belly-laugh of his. But they’re worth looking at—his skull and that hook nose like a hawk’s, the curve of his lips. Ugly, I grant you, but he’s got style, all right. Just look at his eyes; he’d seem even more of a brute if it wasn’t for that—well, the kind of eyes he has; I don’t know how to describe them. And doesn’t he look self-confident, a real tough customer, hot-tempered, too? What? Hot-tempered and sensual as they’re made. How that man loves life! For all my loathing of him I can’t help saying what one says of some kinds of bulldog: ‘He’s so ugly that he’s a beauty!’ Don’t you agree? Look, that’s Papa! Papa with his work-girls round him. That’s how he always was: in his shirt-sleeves, with his little white beard and scissors dangling. He’d build you a fancy dress with a couple of dish-rags and half a dozen pins. That was taken in the workroom. Do you see the draped manikins at the end of the room, and the designs on the walls? He’d been appointed costumier at the Opera and given up working for private customers. Just go and ask the Opera people what they thought of old man Goepfert in those days! When my mother had to be put away and he and I were left alone, he wanted to take me on as his partner, poor old fellow; he meant to leave the business to me. A good paying business it was; it’s thanks to it that I can get along now without working. But you know how it would affect a kid— seeing actresses about the place all day. I had only one ambition: to be a dancer. He let me have my way; what’s more, he got old Mme. Staub to take me under her wing, and it was a real joy to him to see me getting on so well at it. He was always harping on my career. Well, it’s a good thing the poor old boy can’t see how I’ve gone downhill since those days. I cried, you know, when I had to give up dancing. Women as a rule haven’t much ambition; they take things as they come. But on the stage we’re at it all the time—struggling to make good; and one soon gets to enjoy the struggle as much as one’s actual successes. So it seems the end of the world when one has to say goodbye to all that and live a humdrum life with nothing to look forward to. Look, here are my travel photos! All in a jumble, of course! There we’re having lunch; I’m not sure where—in the Carpathians, I think. Hirsch was on a shooting-trip. He sported a long, drooping moustache in those days; rather like a Sultan, isn’t he? The Prince always addressed him as ‘Mahomed.’ Do you see that sunburnt fellow standing behind me? It’s Prince Peter, who became King of Servia. He gave me the two white whippets lying down in front; see the way they’re curled up—just like you! That man there who’s laughing, don’t you think he’s very like me? Look hard! No? Well, it’s my brother all the same. He was dark, like Papa, while I take after Mother—fair; well, it’s auburn, if you like. Don’t be so absurd! Oh, well, have it your own way; carroty! But I’ve inherited my father’s character, and my brother took after Mother. Look, he comes out better in this one… . I’ve no photo of Mother, not one; Papa destroyed the lot. He never spoke of her to me, or took me to Saint Anne’s. But all the same he used to go and see her there, himself, twice a week; year in, year out, he never missed a visit. The attendants told me about it later. He used to sit there in front of her for an hour—sometimes longer. Quite futile it was, as she didn’t recognize him or anyone else. But he simply adored her. He was much older than she. He never got over the worry she gave him. One evening, I remember it so well, Papa was sent for, at the workroom, as Mother’d been arrested. She had been caught stealing from a counter at the Louvre Stores. What a to-do! Mme. Goepfert, the costume-maker at. the Opera—just think! They found a child’s jersey and a pair of socks in her muff. She was released at once; a fit of kleptomania, they said. You know all about that of course. That was the beginning of her breakdown. Well, my brother took after her in many ways. He got into dreadful trouble with a bank. Hirsch helped him out. But he’d have gone Mother’s way sooner or later, if there hadn’t been that accident. No, leave that one alone! Drop it, there’s a good man! I tell you, it’s not a photo of me; it’s … it’s a little godchild, who died. Look at this one instead. It’s … it was taken … just outside Tangiers. No, don’t take any notice, Toine dear, it’s over now; I’ve stopped crying, can’t you see I’ve stopped? The Bubana plain, our camp by the Si Guebbas caravanserai. That’s me; beside the Marabout of Sidi-Bel-Abbés. Do you see Marrakesh in the background? What do you think of this one? It was taken near Missum-Missum, or it might be Dongo; I can’t remember. Those are two Dzem chiefs, and a rare job I had taking ‘em! They’re cannibals; oh, yes, they still exist, all right! Now that’s a ghastly one! Look, don’t you see? Just there, that little heap of stones. Got it
? Well, there’s a woman beneath that heap. Stoned to death. Horrible, isn’t it? Try to imagine it—a decentish sort of woman whom her husband had deserted for no earthly reason three years before. He’d vanished and, as she thought he was dead, she’d married again. Two years later he came back. Bigamy in those tribes is reckoned the crime of crimes. So they stoned her. Hirsch made me come to Meched just to see it, but I took to my heels and stayed half a mile away. I’d seen the woman dragged through the village the morning before the execution, and that was sickening enough, I assure you. But he saw it out; yes, he pushed his way to the front. Listen! It seems they dug a hole, a very deep hole, and led the woman to it. She lay down in it of her own accord, without saying a word. Would you believe it? She didn’t utter a sound, but the crowd were yelling for her death so loudly that I could hear them, even at that distance away. Their high priest gave the lead. First of all he read out the sentence. Then he picked up a huge boulder and hurled it with all his force into the hole. Hirsch told me she didn’t utter a cry. That started the crowd off. They’d big piles of stones stacked up ready, and each of them took what he wanted there and flung his quota into the hole. Hirsch swore to me that, for his part, he didn’t throw any. When the hole was full— brimming over, as you can see—they stamped it down, yelling all the time, and then they all decamped. Hirsch insisted on my coming back to take a snapshot, as it was I who had the camera. I had to give in. Why, even now the mere thought of it sets my heart palpitating—don’t you feel it? There she lay, under those stones. Dead, most likely… . No, not that one! Hands off!”
The Thibaults Page 47